just another ex-jazz-musician/proto-rapper/Jersey-Irish-poet-actor/print-junkie/film-raptor/beat-hipster-"white Negro"-rhapsodizer/ex-hippie-punk-'60s-radical-organizer's take on all things cultural, political, spiritual & aggrandizing

Friday, July 15, 2016

TURKEY TAKE

Last chance to stop Erdogan, Turkey's version of Putin and Trump. Army coups aren't my thing but neither is the accumulation of power and destruction of democratic freedoms that has been happening under Erdogan. But if you're gonna overturn a government, better arrest and jail the head of the government first. Big mistake.

Democracy, as in plurality of votes, even if some results were suspicious, has been saved it looks like. But looks are deceiving. Turkey, under Erdogan in recent years has jailed more journalists per capita than anywhere, even Russia or China. Either way you slice it, bad news for freedom of expression. Artists and intellectuals have been leaving Turkey already, I bet the brain drain increases.